For perhaps the first time in my memory a defeat seemed almost like a win, as Saints gave a good account of themselves up at Manchester City.
Saints were lambs to the slaughter when they arrived in Manchester for the televised return to the Premier League, it was hard to predict anything other than a City rout and the only question was how many it would be, secretly I think most Saints fans feared the worse and everyone I talked to seemed to feel the same way, if we had been offered a 3-1 defeat pre mtach we would have taken it and all gone home.
There can be no doubt that City dominated this game, 64% possession is a big number, 20 shots of which 15 were on target compared to our 9 with 6 hitting the mark, meant that we spent much of the game with our backs to the wall, although this worked greatly in our favour.
Firstly it meant that with us sitting so deep it gave the home side little chance to truly use their pace against us and secondly it enabled us to use our passing game to full effect when playing out of defence and countering.
But perhaps our biggest asset last season was our team spirit and luckily it showed no sign of having gone away during the summer and our willingness to keep going even at stages when it did look like City might put their foot on the accelerator mean that we dug in and in the end were unlucky not to come away with at least a point and maybe more.
Nigel Adkins seems to have learned a few things in the summer as well, one of those things being that he needed to be more flexible than the rigid formation we employed last year and this line up showed it, he also showed that be was brave enough to make difficult decisions, leaving Rickie Lambert on the bench some would say was not as tough as it should have been given the strikers relatively poor pre season, however the fact was that whatever Lambert's form, it needed to be done, out of neccessity we needed someone up front as a lone striker who was a bit more mobile than Rickie, this could be the case on more than one occasion this season especially away from home, its no slur on Rickie, its tactics and as Adkins showed its a case of getting those tactics right and making the right changes at the right times to suit the way the game is going.
With 20 minutes to go it looked like Saints might cause a shock, they didnt and thats perhaps another lesson to be learned, but there were enough positives to build on in this game, however as much as this will come the end of the season probably be one of the closest home games City will have in respect of the scoreline, Saints have to as i say build on it, our squad is still lacking in key areas and if we are to go on and win games once we get ourselves in a winning position rather than be plucky losers as we were on Sunday, then we still need to be bringing in at least 3 of the names mentioned this week.
A look at the unused subs on the bench confirms this, yes the three subs who came on where top clas, but the other three outfield subs to be very blunt were making up the numbers, Im sorry but Dan Seaborne was not considered good enough for our League One side, so he isnt Premier quality and this has to be addressed.
All in all a pleasing result, OK we didnt get a point from it, but perhaps like pre season games, this fixture was a little less than being about the result and a little more about proving to ourselves and the rest of the division that we can live with the big boys, from that point of view we took a very big step on Sunday, but we have had our free hit game so to speak and we now have 37 games left where we need to get points in.